In addition: as ammunition bearers in machine gun companies, infantry-gun companies and anti-tank companies.
In battalion and regimental staffs as cable carriers at telephone sections.
In batteries as gunner 5 and 6.
In engineer battalions as engineers not directly involved in the combat. Example:
Formation of a company from only German soldiers for combat deployment.
Formation of 2 further companies with German cadre, filled with Hilfswillige, for bridge building, road and quarters construction, mining and demining, obstacle construction.
In signal battalions in mixed telephone-construction groups.
For building units of all kinds. Only German supervisory staff (ratio 1:10) can be used here.
For supply troops of all kinds. In these, generally, only supervisory staff and the absolutely necessary specialists such as mechanics, bakers, butchers, etc. are to be left.
The purpose of these measures is to free German soldiers. It is not possible that Hilfswillige are hired additionally, just to do mindless work, and the baggage train is thus increased without gaining a German soldier. A sharp supervision is also necessary here!
Therefore, Hilfswillige were to fill all types of auxiliary service positions. While the requirements for most of these positions were low – and therefore could be brought in line with the Nazi ideological belief of Russians as primitive subhumans – the use of Hilfswillige in craftsman or mechanic positions blurred that line. Even when considering all of the boundaries drawn by the German military between German soldiers and Hilfswillige, one cannot escape the impression that in this question, military necessity overtook Nazi ideology. This became especially clear in the cases where Russian Hilfswillige fought side by side with German soldiers, prompting XIth Army Corps Chief of Staff, Oberst Helmuth Groscurth, to write: ‘It is disturbing that we are forced to strengthen our fighting troops with Russian prisoners of war, who are already being turned into gunners. It’s an odd state of affairs that the “beasts” we have been fighting against are now living with us in closest harmony.’[21] However, even the most fanatical Nazi ideologue had to recognize from mid-1942 on that German troops in the east could not have fought without the help of hundreds of thousands of Soviet men and women serving in the German army and in other agencies, such as, for example, the Reichsbahn. Otherwise, the Germans would have had to mobilize the Reich’s manpower resources at a much higher level, an issue that was feared by Hitler and many other high-ranking German officials due to traumatic experience of the collapse of 1918. Because of this period of limited German mobilization from mid-1942 to summer 1944, Bernhard Kroener has written that it was ‘not quite total war’.[22]
Once German soldiers were freed, units needed to proceed in the following manner:[23]
C) Use of freed German soldiers
The following is to be done:
1) infantry (not the last-surviving sons or the physically unsuitable), whose present position will be filled in the future by Hilfswilligen, are a) if their training permits, to be immediately integrated in rifle companies, b) to be consolidated in training companies by the division and after sufficient training to be transferred to rifle companies. The divisions may, at their own discretion, also use members of other branches.
2) Soldiers of all other branches and supply troops, as well as the last-surviving sons and the physically non-suitable for infantry service, are to be registered by each division and are to be trained for winter and positional warfare. They are then available as reserves, which must suffice until spring, for the winter position.
The initial gain of these measures was rather small, as few soldiers could be directly placed into rifle units. Furthermore, these measures destroyed valuable cadres and necessitated the introduction or rebuilding from scratch of new companies and battalions, a demanding task that cost much blood. The units mentioned under point 2 often enough could not fulfil their task due to the lack of adequate training, equipment and especially leadership. They marked the bottom of a poor man’s army, often suffering extraordinary losses with minor military effect. The widespread forming of such alarm units in late 1942 was a clear sign of an army that had lost its balance.
German losses in the east were enormous – and continual. In 1942, for example, German monthly casualties exceeded 70,000 in nine months. In this year, the German replacement system could forward more troops than the Ostheer lost in only eight months. But when it did so, it never surpassed an additional 30,000 men. On the other side, January 1942 alone saw losses of over 214,000 men, while the Ostheer received only 43,800 replacements; the heavy fighting in August 1942 cost the Ostheer over 250,000 losses, while not even 90,000 replacements arrived in the east.[24] These massive losses forced the German army to lower training and recruiting standards. While part of that could be compensated for by field training, the quality of replacements decreased. The actual strength of the German Ostheer never again reached its peak strength of 22 June 1941 (3.3 million men). While primarily allied units helped to rebuild the strength of the Ostheer for the 1942 summer offensive, their destruction in 1942/43 forced the Germans to send more men in spring 1943. Before Operation Citadel, the German army in the east could field nearly 3.15 million men, but from then on – with pressure from the Western Allies rapidly increasing – German strength fell sharply.[25] Combined with a decrease in training quality, this led directly into the defeats of late 1943 and 1944.
Chapter 7
The German Army’s Understanding of the War in the East: Ideology and Motivations
In January 1943, the German southern wing in the Soviet Union teetered on the edge of catastrophe. In addition to the Sixth Army slowly dying in the rubble of Stalingrad, elements of Army Group A that had been struggling to seize the oil fields of the Caucasus region had not only been checked, but now faced their own encirclement. For one German non-commissioned officer deployed in the Caucasus, the crisis that faced the German army led to a brutal interpretation of the conflict. In a letter to his wife, he wrote:
Does war actually have its own laws? I read now ‘Not everyone that saith unto me “Lord, Lord,” enters into Heaven, but rather those who do the will of my Father in Heaven.’ Just now, an elder came to me, someone took his pig. Now he wants to have at least something from it. In any case, he lost his pig. Of course it is for our kitchen, but this is hard for those who affected by it. Should I now give my people less to live on to spare the civilian population? Or am I obligated to care for the men so that they live as well as possible? In general, one says that war has its own law. Thus, the case is settled… You see, the war brings not only a re-evaluation, but a revolution in the moral sphere. [It] has its own law?[1]
For this NCO, the war in the east had developed into one that existed outside the normal parameters or understandings of conventional conflicts. Such an understanding, however, did not necessarily indicate a fervent belief in Nazi ideological tenets; rather it was based on preserving his men in a theatre of war which demanded a brutally utilitarian approach to the civilians in his midst. While his thoughts, doubts, and reflections on the war do not represent every German soldier’s approach to the war against the Soviet Union, his conviction that this conflict was indeed different from the army’s other campaigns would certainly have been shared by the majority of his comrades who served on the Eastern front.
1
H.R., 29.01.1943, Feldpost Sammlung, Museum für Kommunikation (hereafter MfK), 3.2002.0985.